My take on the ATG’s Week 20 theme: A pony solving a mystery. I drew the original sketch in just under an hour, complete with all of the details, while sitting in class. Then I sat down to do ink and paint…

Three and a half hours later I had a loosely passable picture. The idea itself was pretty simple; pinkie pie lying in a pool of raspberry jam with two investigators looking on and commenting about the tragedy. This evolved a bit as I moved forward and ended up adding a few more elements like the Applejack color clone back there that I’ve decided to call Snapshot. I also vastly improved the background elements.

That said it still has many known issues that I don’t have any patience left to fix, such as the perspective error on the back wall; low contrast between the island and the back wall, and an odd Pinkie Pie orientation (it doesn’t match perspective.)